Fert Report

I got the call with our fert report this morning.  While it wasn't the "you have 8 perfectly fertilized embryos" that I hoped for, we are still better than last cycle.  Out of the 8 eggs retrieved, 7 were mature, and out of the 7 mature, 4 fertilized normally and they are watching a fifth.  So right now we have 4 or 5 fertilized embryos.  At this point last cycle, we had 3 embryos.

My clinic only does day 5 or  day 6 blastocyst transfers.  There are two schools of thought when it comes to deciding when to transfer embryos.  One side feels like the embryos will do their best in a natural environment, so transfer on day 3 to get the embryos into the uterus ASAP.  This camp may push transfer to day 5 if there are enough embryos that they are confident that some will make it to day 5.  The other side of the coin is that waiting until day 5 gives you the best chance for success because most aneuploid embryos will stop growing before then.  It is any easy way to weed out some the bad embryos, so that your odds of transferring a good embryo are higher.  My clinic falls into the latter category.

The hardest part of being pushed to a 5 day transfer is knowing that there is a chance that none of the embryos will make it to blastocyst and you will have nothing to transfer.  I can tell you from experience that going through all of the meds, injections and retrieval only to not even have a chance at success sucks.  I just want to make it to transfer this time, I want a chance at getting pregnant.

Egg Retrieval Day

I had my ER today.  I was hoping for 10 eggs, but we ended up with 8.  The good news is that the doc said that 7 of them looked perfect and the other one looked really good.  I hope that this means that most of my 8 will be mature.  The next big hurdle is fertilization.  Last cycle only 3 of our 5 mature eggs fertilized.  Hopefully our fert rate this cycle will be a little higher.

I was a little sad that they forgot my Valium.  It really helped me relax and was the highlight of my last ER.  I am not going to let them forget my Valium for ET next week.  I am also finding out that I don't come out of anesthesia well.  I end up really dizzy and light headed.  Luckily I don't get sick, but I had to have help standing, getting dressed and walking.

Overall  I feel really positive about our 8 eggs, I think they are going to make some kick ass embryos.

Triggering Tonight

I had my second monitoring appointment this morning.  It looks like my lazy left ovary decided to join the game.  I had 8 decent sized follicles on the right and 4 on the left.  The RE thinks that we should get 10-12 eggs and hopefully 8-10 will be mature.  My lining also thickened up nicely and is now just over 11.

I am triggering tonight at 11:30pm for ER at 11:00am on Friday.

First Monitoring Appointment and Intra Lipids

I suck at blogging right now, luckily my 5 followers can get their updates from FB or the bump if they are interested.

I had my first monitoring appointment Monday.  I had 11ish measurable (greater than 10mm) follicles and several less than 10.  It's hard to keep exact counts because the RE calls out the numbers so quickly.  Most were around 13, so I am going back tomorrow (Wednesday) for more monitoring.  The RE thinks that I will trigger either Wednesday or Thursday for ER on Friday or Saturday.  While part of me would love the day off work Friday, another part is hoping for Saturday, so that maybe a few more small follicles will have time to catch up.

I also had my Intra lipid infusion Monday.  It was ok, but I didn't have the worlds greatest nurse.  She had my hand on my thigh when she started my IV and when she stuck my vein it started dripping blood everywhere.  It got all over my new jeans and to top it off I had to go back to work afterwards with the giant blood stain on my pants.  Then the nurse talked about her kids the entire time.  Apparently she has 16 year old twin boys that like to beat the hell out of each other.  Of all the topics of conversation to pick, this is the one you go with when treating a bunch of women going through IVF?  I am not sure she was the sharpest tool in the shed.

I've officially lost my damn mind

I did something today that I never do, I cried at work.  I managed to avoid a complete ugly cry, but tears were definitely shed.  I think the combination of work stress, hormone shots, and the beginnings of a cold have cracked me.  I think I have lost my mind.  I have never felt that crazy in my life.

The worst part about crying at work is that we have an open office plan.  It is sort of like really short cubes. I'm pretty sure evryone in my department saw me .  Then once I started, I couldn't stop.  So I literally sat at my desk most of the afternoon sniffing and blowing my nose, trying to hide the fact that I was crying.

Luckily my boss was really nice about it, which he should have been it was me getting pissed and yelling at him that set off the whole fiasco.  He's basically told me that if I need time off, to take it and not worry about work.  I just can't let me taking time off to cause us to miss our deadline next week.  Fate intervened tonight and one of our servers is getting ready to crash.  They have to take it down and move everything to a new server, which means a forced break tonight.  While a little relaxation time is nice, it also means more work for tomorrow.

Starting Stims Tomorrow!

I've sucked at blogging the last few weeks.  I start stims tomorrow.  This is where it starts to get fun.  Once you start stims things move along pretty quickly (or so it seemed for IVF #1).

Day 8 of IVF #2

I'm never sure how to number my IVF cycle days.  If you count from the day I officially started the cycle according to my clinic, today is day 8.  If you are counting days since my last period, today is day 2.  Either way today was also my last Lupron shot, hopefully this means my insomnia will let up some.  Tomorrow is my first ganirelix injection, which I have heard can cause some side effects too.  I guess I'll have to wait and see.

I also scheduled my Intra lipid infusion today.  It was supposed to be Friday October 11th, but the infusion center is booked.  My nurse gave me the go ahead to schedule it for Monday the 14th, which is also my first day of monitoring.  That also kicks off a really busy week for me at work, so this cycle should be interesting.

My baseline ultrasound and blood work is Friday and I should start stims on Monday.  I can't believe how quickly this cycle is flying by.  My egg retrieval will be here before I know it which scares the crap out of me.